Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,17
dirt, anyway.
The framework creaked alarmingly with every step she took—and that was with Olgun's assistance!—but Shins reached the third floor without incident. She pushed through the outer door, which was connected to only a single hinge, and that more by sentiment than genuine attachment, and entered a hallway made almost entirely of rickety. The cobwebs, she was sure, were primarily for the ambiance, as most spiders had too much self-respect to live here.
“Be it ever so horrible…” Shins began, before a flicker of someone else's curiosity stopped her. “What?”
Then again, “What? No, nothing. How can you smell anything over all the garbage and apathy? Ugh. I guess you'd better give me a hand, then. Or a nostril. How would you even describe helping someone to smell something? Has anyone before us ever even needed to describe helping someone to smell soghaaaaooourghthkt!”
Said noise was, most probably, caused by the letters attempting to flee Widdershins's head. The stench of the building, the neighborhood, the streets, had been bad enough already. Now, after she'd felt the familiar tingle of her partner's power, it flooded her nose, her mouth, her lungs. She felt as though she'd just tried to inhale an athlete's armpit. Through a used diaper.
Before the horrific fetor could reach her gut, an event that could only have resulted in the addition of yet another foul odor to the hall, Olgun narrowed the scope of his “nasal assistance.” Just as he'd aided her in the past in focusing in one particular sound or sight, so now did he sweep aside any extraneous scent, if only briefly. Widdershins slowly straightened, sniffing like a curious kitten.
“Yeah, something definitely doesn't belong here. It's almost…I'm not sure. Floral?”
Tentative agreement from her partner.
Whatever that scent wafted from, it wasn't in the hallway proper. The bouquet was such that, even over the other lingering odors, Shins wouldn't have needed Olgun's help to detect it if it were.
Inside one of the rooms, then.
She crept by a few of them, past doors that were no more than uneven slabs of half-rotted wood, nailed to makeshift hinges, until she arrived at one in particular. One that hung just a few inches open, when she knew she'd securely latched it last time she was here.
Shins was angered at the invasion of her sanctum, confused as to how anyone might have found it, but she wasn't at all surprised. Soon as she realized something was out of place in one of the apartments, she knew which it would be.
Rapier unsheathed and at the ready, Olgun's senses reaching out to warn her of any threat she might miss, Shins nudged the door open a hair more and slipped inside.
Basically a room and a half, the flat was largely open, with only a smattering of furniture. It was the perfume that hit her first. And it was perfume, that scent; she could tell, now that it was stronger, more direct. Too much and too spread out to be the lingering traces of someone who'd passed through, or even the result of a spill. No, this strong, this evenly spread—someone had very deliberately sprinkled perfume across the place.
So what did you not want anyone outside to smell, you motherless frogs?
No enemies by the door or lurking in the shadows with a pistol, and a quick Olgun-enhanced glance revealed no tripwires or other booby traps. Safe from any immediate danger—probably—Shins crossed the room, heading for the nook in which her bed, chests, and various accoutrements awaited.
No ambush. No trap. So far as she could tell, no theft, and anyway, the only stuff worth stealing was carefully hidden away. So what the—?
Shins smacked a palm to her mouth to keep from shouting aloud. There was someone—something!—in the bed.
Unwilling to give the intruder more time to react, Shins turned her startled jump into a forward leap, coming down beside the mattress. Her rapier was already winging outward when Olgun's cry of alarm actually registered. She couldn't quite cut her thrust short, but she did manage to twist her wrist aside, so the blade punched into the filthy pillow rather than the…
She gawped downward, leaning on the rapier's pommel, her throat working silently.
A corpse. Someone had intruded into Shins's apartment—well, one of them—for apparently no other purpose than to lay a corpse atop her mattress, head propped on pillow and blankets tucked neatly under its chin.
“Well, we…. It's about time to buy a new set of linens anyway, yes? Or steal. Yeah, maybe steal a set.”
Olgun allowed her to go